New Delhi: The Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court a plea for perjury action against unknown public servants for allegedly misleading the court during Rafale case hearing was “completely misconceived” as media reports and some “incomplete internal file notings” cannot be the basis for such proceedings. In a reply affidavit submitted in the apex court on the application filed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, the Centre said the allegations of making false statements and suppressing facts from the court were “completely false” and “baseless”.
The government said its submissions in the court were based on records, while the petitioners were relying on “selective leaks” in media from the Ministry of Defence files on opinions expressed by individual officers or a group of officers and this presents an “incomplete picture” on matters relating to national security and defence. “On facts as well, the contention of the petitioners that the officials of the answering respondent (Centre) have made false statements and suppressed evidence while submitting information on ‘decision making process’, ‘offsets’ and ‘pricing’ pursuant to orders passed by this court is completely false, baseless and an attempt to intimidate government servants from performing their duty on this ground alone, the application is liable to be dismissed,” it said.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi is scheduled to hear on Friday the pleas seeking review of its December 14 last year verdict in the Rafale case along with applications seeking perjury action against unknown government servants and production of certain documents before the court. On December 14 last year, the apex court had dismissed the plea filed by Sinha, Shourie and Bhushan seeking probe into alleged irregularities in the multi-crore Rafale fighter jet deal. In its reply to the application seeking perjury action, the Centre has said “in view of dismissal of the main writ petition, the present application which has been filed is not at all maintainable.”
